Shelby slit my throat today. The crimson cascade rolled down the designer shirt of Egyptian linen and pooled in my navel. Hours later, she finally stopped crying and sat, distractedly picking at the mournful and crusted flakes. She rubbed her hands together, rolling the smear on her hands into countless tiny cylinders of hand grime and lifetime, eventually slapping her thighs to clear them. If only I could have spoken, then. The things I could have said! Don't worry; I'm sure you had good reason. Don't worry, it's not like I blame you. Don't worry, sometimes these things happen. Don't worry, I knew the risks. Don't worry, don't worry.
Her delicate little feet left just the faintest impression of themselves on the unfeeling linoleum, smudged at toe and heel from the scuff of her stride, marked indelibly in the last-wet remnants of my blood.
The next residents of the little downtown colonial will get the stains out with a cheap vinegar recipe. The young couple who buy from them will never know anyone died here. Things will go back to just the way they should be.
So many questions.
ReplyDeleteUm, wow.
ReplyDeleteExcept, "the way they should be" (in my mind) doesn't mean that someone's dead at the end of it. Maybe the narrator already saw himself or herself (it could be either, but my guess it's a he) as dead, or at least as a non-entity, with all those 'don't worry' statements. My thoughts on getting to the end were "scarily morbid,' but I didn't want to write that without some explanation, which is the bit about the narrator.
I don't know. Sometimes I think of first sentences and just go from there, just what strikes my fancy and no more.
ReplyDeleteFair enough. It's the English degree and the storyteller and the devourer of story in me to start dissecting it like that. Going with a first sentence is always an interesting thing to do.
ReplyDelete